Why Facebook’s new paid verification system may be ‘broken’ – Times of India

Facebook parent company Meta followed Twitter in announcing Meta Verified, the social media company’s subscription plan that offers protection to the users’ account from impersonation. However, it looks like the system is ‘broken’ because reportedly several imposters with a blue tick are masquerading as legitimate accounts of Google and Meta on Facebook.
According to Mashable, a blue tick on a page shouldn’t be assumed legitimate. It said that the verified Facebook pages appear to have been hacked, with their page name and Facebook URL changed last month.
“Some of these pages had millions of followers. Each displays a blue verification badge that says ‘Facebook confirmed this profile is authentic’,” the report noted.

Fake pages contain malicious ads
The report said that various fake/ hacked pages with millions of followers have been approved to run ads, which are malicious in nature, across Facebook’s network. There is no clarity on how “far-reaching these scam ads” are and how many users have fallen victim.
Once potential victims are on the fake page, they are directed to download purported Facebook Ad tools or Google AI software, depending on which ad they clicked. Links direct users to a ‘.rar’ file hosted on a Trello page which very likely contains malware.

Pages of celebrities targeted
According to the report, a page which was started as “Fans of Miss Pooja” in 2012, was renamed twice by August 2013 to “Miss Pooja”, and was changed to “Google AI.” The URL was also changed to “facebook.com/Google.BardAI2”.
Since the page has a verification badge, people are apparently falling for the scam ads running on the page. Several hacked pages had millions of followers, the report said.
Another page related to singer Babbu Maan with 3 million followers is also said to be hacked. Its name has been changed to Meta Ads and it also has a blue tick. The page also ran Facebook ads with a similar copy as the fake Google page.

What Meta has to say
A Meta spokesperson said that the company invests significant resources into detecting and preventing scams and hacks.
“While many of the improvements we’ve made are difficult to see – because they minimise people from having issues in the first place – scammers are always trying to get around our security measures. We regularly improve our methods for combating these scams and have built teams dedicated to improving the support we can offer to people and businesses,” the company was quoted as saying.